BUREAUCRACY VERSUS ART: ONE YEAR IN THE IRON CAGE.(Brian Kennedy, director of the National Gallery of Australia)

IN ONE OF HIS first public pronouncements upon taking the job as Director of the National Gallery of ustralia, Dr Brian Kennedy called for a debate on the le of a national gallery. His call was met with silence--the usual artworld response to anything resembling debate, although backbiting and muttering in dark corners are also very popular. Tonight, based on the experience of one brief but highly eventful year as Head of Australian Art at the NGA, I'd like to take up Dr Kennedy's invitation, and rinse some debating points about the role and purpose of a national institution, and museums in general.

While there will be many who say that I was not the man for the job, or could not cut the mustard, I'm not especially concerned about those claims. I didn't go into the NGA assuming that I would not have to do many routine bureaucratic tasks. I was prepared to take on these tasks because of the brilliant possibilities of the job. For someone who had spent his working life talking about other people's exhibitions, it was a chance to cross the line and take an active hand in the curatorial arena. I felt, over the years, that my criticisms and comments were falling on deaf ears, and that it was a necessary next step to "put up or shut up". I was also excited about the possibilities of helping to shape the direction of a national collection--a collection that had taken some dubious turns in recent years, particularly in the field of contemporary art.

Finally, it was a chance to work collaboratively with a large number of people--a novel experience for someone who had spent much of the previous sixteen years sitting in a room staring at a computer screen. Included in that group of people were curators such as Wally Caruana, Roger Butler, Gael Newton, Christine Dixon and others, for whom I had the highest respect. So too for many of the people in other departments, from Jan Meek in public relations to the conservators and installation crew, the librarians and the publications department. Even today, I feel that the experience of working with all these people has been a valuable one: particularly the small, closely-knit group that worked so hard on the Federation exhibition.

I was prepared to spend a good half of my time in bureaucratic activities in return for the pleasure and the challenge of working on exhibitions and collection development. As it turned out, the bureaucratic aspects of the job occupied the bulk of my time. Rather than fifty per cent, I think I was spending ninety per cent of my days sitting in meetings, taking people on tours of the gallery, or doing routine paperwork. That time was stretched beyond all easy reckoning, since--like so many others at the NGA--I was often at work long after closing hours.

Max Weber described bureaucratic time as an "iron cage", but it also savours of the padded cell. The problem was that I was working extremely long hours but felt that I was achieving nothing. Even worse, I felt that my brain was turning to jelly. After years of constant reading and writing, 1 reit too drained to read anything of substance, and wrote virtually nothing of any intellectual value. One of my other delusions had been the idea that I was being hired for my writing and debating abilities, that I was expected to change the rather aloof and hermetic image of curatorship. After a few opening gambits, I found that these activities took a secondary role to the everyday business of gallery administration.

Without going too far into the gory details, the upshot was that after a year I had no desire to keep beating my head against a brick wall. I felt that my physical and mental health was deteriorating, and my home life was falling apart. Unlike many others in that institution who are equally unhappy, but fearful of the consequences of losing their jobs (or--to put a more positive spin on such matters--held by a loyalty, to the institution built up over many years), I was not concerned about finding new work. Neither was I preoccupied with status, or worried that my defection might give comfort to the detractors who had tried to prevent me taking up the job. My chief desires were to work in a way that I found productive and stimulating, and to reconcile the worlds of work and home. My greatest concern was not to give the impression that I was leaving my staff in the lurch--deserting them, and dumping my workload on their shoulders.

When I announced my intention to resign as Head of Australian Art, I made it clear that I would be willing to continue to work on a large number of gallery tasks. I offered to continue writing submissions for acquisitions that I had initiated; to stay in the loop with the Macquarie Bank sculpture prize--in which I had been part of the early discussions; and to remain on various committees that I thought were important. Although there was never any formal notification, beyond one emailed memo from the director, I found that I was excluded from all these activities--as though I had suddenly become an enemy alien.